By 1950, Francis and Edith Schaeffer became concerned about problems within "The Separated Movement," a movement that encouraged the Bible-believing Christians to separate themselves from liberal congregations and denominations.

 Fran began to warn of the danger of getting discouraged with the battle and then compromising with the enemy or withdrawing from the conflict.  He also warned against becoming cold and hard of heart as one served the Lord.  He saw some people fighting for orthodox belief, and then becoming unorthodox in practice when they lost a Christ-like spirit and love for others.  He challenged them to remember that the Lord's work requires self-denial, self-sacrifice, and hard work.  He strongly emphasized the need for Bible-believing Christians to produce both scholarly material and warm devotional material.  He saw the real danger of Bible-believing people, involved in the battle for truth, losing the love God commands us to demonstrate daily to everyone.  In The Tapestry, Edith quoted from an article he wrote at this time, "There is a danger of developing in our age of necessary contending, a will to win, rather than a will to be right. . . .Our daily prayer should be that our loving Lord will keep His arms so about us that we will neither waver in the fight nor allow the Devil to destroy us from within." 1.  "To be right" includes loving others as we share the truth with them, so we can lead them to embrace the God of love.  "A will to win" can quickly lead to saying hurtful, unloving things, that can destroy those God loves and drive them away from God. 

In one of his later books, True Spirituality, Schaeffer also warned against pride when you know you are right and the other person is wrong:

In the midst of being right, if self is exalted, my fellowship with God can be destroyed.  It is not wrong to be right, nor to say that wrong is wrong, but it is wrong to have the wrong attitude in being right, and to forget that my relationship with my fellow men must always be personal and as equals.  If I really love a man as I love myself, I will long to see him be what he could be on the basis of Christ's work, for that is what I want or what I should want for myself on the basis of Christ's work. 2. 

The year 1951 marked the beginning of a spiritual revival and renewal of Francis Schaeffer's life and ministry.  He had been in Europe for three years.  He faced the crisis of how best to communicate the gospel in a culture that was foreign to him.  He struggled to give people, recently devastated mentally, physically, and spiritually by two World Wars, exactly what they needed in the area of truth and practical concern.  Not only was the culture foreign to him, but most of the so-called Christianity in the churches of Europe was not biblical.

At the same time, he was concerned about the lack of love that was so apparent in many of the orthodox Christian churches he knew in "The Separated Movement."  Too many people had developed a hard, inflexible attitude in their standing for the truth.  Too much of true Bible-believing Christianity had become unloving and hateful in practice.  He was disturbed about the reality of Christianity, if the result of believing was becoming unloving.  Some enjoyed debating and winning battles more than winning someone to Christ by expressing a loving faith.  The fact that Fran himself grew in this regard can be shown right before he died: when someone asked if he thought he would win his battles for truth, he replied, "I don't know, but at least I have fought for what is right.  It is not whether we can win or lose, but whether or not we are faithful, loyal, and true to the Lord Jesus Christ."  Francis and Edith Schaeffer fought on the right sides of the battles of their day.  They tried to do so with love for God and others, and out of respect for the holiness of God and the truth of the Scriptures.  This remained Fran's goal in his final book, The Great Evangelical Disaster.  It warned evangelical churches about the temptation to fall away from belief in the Scriptures, even as many churches had done fifty years earlier and in the time of Machen.

Fran came to many of his ideas on true spirituality, of the need to speak the truth with love, after a transforming spiritual experience occurred soon after they moved to Chalet Bijou in Champéry.  He needed to be alone with his thoughts, so when the weather was good he hiked in the mountains.  When the weather was bad, he walked and thought in the chalet hayloft.  He read his Bible and prayed.  He told Edith that he was taking his faith all the way back to his early days of agnosticism (of not knowing whether God was really there or not) to see if Christianity were really true.  He wanted to rethink everything and see if there were good and sufficient reasons to be a Christian.  He frightened Edith because of his intense and serious commitment to throw his faith away if he could not find its reality.  She prayed earnestly for him as he insisted on walking this road alone.  While walking in the hayloft one day, the Holy Spirit poured His power into Fran in a mighty way.  Fran renewed his Christian commitment, and this became the turning point in his life.  What he learned from that time he later incorporated into his books The Church before the Watching World and True Spirituality. 3.

Fran's "hayloft experience" gave him the firm conviction that God is truly, objectively there as the Bible describes Him, whether people think God is there or not.  God convinced him that the Bible is true in all that it teaches and the Bible applies to the whole of life.  Fran learned again by experience that the spiritual reality of love and holiness, which is given by the Holy Spirit, must be present in our lives, especially so while fighting for the truth.

During his walk he not only came to some intellectual decisions, but he had the deep spiritual experiences of other great men of God before being called to a greater and more influential work.  He found himself walking and praising God.  He began to "feel" songs of praise well up from within himself.  He began to sing and write poetry again.  He learned what the finished work of Christ meant in his present experience; therefore, he began to emphasize more that people should become Christians based upon the objective truths of Christian teaching--truths that could be thought through and analyzed again and again based upon new knowledge.  Truths that could bear the weight of thorough investigation.  He stressed that a personal, subjective relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ is part of our accepting His finished work upon the cross in our behalf.

In 1951, Fran recaptured in his life what many of the Reformers taught on the devotional level.  Fran's hayloft experience did not lead him to think that faith is grounded in experience.  Christian faith is grounded in the objective revelation of the God of the Bible, but experiencing a relationship with God that continues throughout life should follow a person's new birth.  He recognized that his own lack of the reality of the presence of God in his life was related to his ignorance about the meaning of the finished work of Christ in his present life, and time spent in the hayloft helped him overcome that ignorance.  He began to obey Christ in everything from a real heartfelt love for Him.  Obedience to Christ ceased to be a burden upon his back, and became the joy of his life.  He interpreted his experience, lectured about it, and then wrote about the work of the Holy Spirit in True Spirituality.

After his hayloft experience, a new door opened to him, a door that led him to acting more upon his knowledge of the Christian faith.  He came to realize the necessity of being more open to Christ in prayer, so that Jesus Christ could bear His fruit in his life.  He learned that if he was to become a more effective agent of God, he must allow Christ to work more within Him.  He believed Christians must know the power of the resurrected Christ in their own lives in the present, so he began to insist that the Christian life involves a daily reliance upon the Holy Spirit within us as a constant act of faith.  He taught that Christians need to think and act upon the promises of Scripture, as well as His commands.  They need to ask God to fulfill His promises and bear fruit in their lives for the sake of a world needing to know Him.  By faith, the Christian should know an ever-increasing, moment by moment experiential relationship with Christ and the whole Trinity.  This wonderful spiritual experience of Fran's marked the real beginning of L'Abri.  It shows the truly experiential side of his faith.  Because the hayloft experience was so deeply personal, it cannot be adequately described; however, Fran's experience occurred  after he increased his knowledge and understanding of Biblical faith and practice.  Then he committed himself to seeking the daily empowering of the Holy Spirit so he could serve God more effectively and bless others.

Fran never again lost his loving relationship with God.  Even in his last years he often woke in the morning and sang Christian songs of praise to his God without being self-conscious.  Sometimes the people downstairs in his home would hear him talking to somebody, but they knew that no one else was upstairs with him.  They would listen carefully and hear that he was pausing from his work to pray to his God, his heavenly Father.  He was never ashamed of being a Christian or knowing God.  One summer day, as he walked along the beach among the sunbathers, he mentioned to those with him, "All these people are worshiping the wrong 'sun [son].'"  Then he began to sing softly for all to hear, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

Following his revival experience, Fran asked Edith a question he began to ask others over and over again:  "Edith, I wonder what would happen to most churches and Christian work if we awakened tomorrow, and everything concerning the work of the Holy Spirit, and everything concerning prayer, were removed from the Bible.  I don't mean just ignored, but actually cut out--disappeared.  I wonder how much difference it would make?" 4.  He wondered how much Christian work would just continue in its dead sameness, devoid of spiritual power and reality, because those in the work were unaware of the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of prayer.  How many Christians had ceased to rely upon the work of God in their lives, and so were doing their work in their own strength?  When Fran asked some of the leaders in his denomination questions like these, they soon got him in trouble.

The Schaeffers' early years in Champéry, prior to the beginning of L'Abri, saw many girls from finishing schools coming to ask him questions.  These girls came from a variety of religious, philosophical, and cultural backgrounds, literally from all over the world.  Fran's greater spiritual depth and understanding, derived from his hayloft experience, enabled God to minister to the real needs of these girls, and his ministry to them was a foretaste of the work of L'Abri.  As Fran answered questions, and as many came to believe, they joined the church the Schaeffers began in Switzerland, the "International Church, Presbyterian, Reforme."  Many found that after becoming Christians, they needed a church home until they could find a Bible-believing church when they returned home.

In Switzerland, Fran became more than an administrator.  Before they left St. Louis, Edith had prayed that Fran would be able to continue preaching in a church.  In answer to those prayers and others she made, before their first Christmas in Champéry, a French-speaking minister asked Pastor Schaeffer to provide a Christmas Eve service in English for the Protestant Church in Champéry.  Prior to World War I, an English lady had built a chapel for Protestant worship (especial­ly for the English-speaking tourists) in this Roman Catholic canton (a "canton" is a state within the nation of Switzerland).  She had built it near the train station for everyone to see, and had included Scripture texts on the inside walls as a silent testimony to the gospel.  On Christmas Sunday, Fran preached to about 150 worshi­pers, including girls from England and boys from Scotland.  Following the service, he learned that he could conduct weekly services in the church for as long as they lived in Champéry.  What an answer to Edith's prayers!  Within two years from the time they left America, Francis Schaeffer was preaching "in a real church" again, and he continued to conduct Christmas Eve services in that church for the next thirty-two years.  Years before they needed a home in the Alps and a church in which to preach, the Lord had provided for their needs.

When believers pray and ask others to pray for them, they never know whose prayers are being answered as God works in their lives.  Think of the hopes and prayers of the English woman who built her chapel in 1912 (the year Fran was born).  Perhaps Francis Schaeffer preached there in answer to her prayers offered thirty or forty years earlier, or perhaps he preached in answer to the Schaeffers' prayers.  Probably, he preached in answer to everyone's prayers combined, and God won a great victory over Satan.  In this life, the combination of God's purposes and the believer's prayers remains a mystery.  But what Christians do right now, what they pray, build, say, or write might meet the needs of some unknown person or group tens or hundreds of years in the future.  By praying for the Lord's leading and plan, and by doing the very best they can today for God's glory, the Christian's work can benefit countless numbers of people over an unforeseen number of years.

Francis August Schaeffer V, "Franky," was born August 3, 1952.  Two months before his birth, Fran and Edith ministered in Spain and Portugal.  Here they witnessed the persecution of Christians by the state, inspired by the Roman Catholic Church.  They grieved when they discovered that the poor Protestant Christians had already come under the influence of teaching similar to Karl Barth's.  The truth of the Bible was worth being persecuted and standing up for, but the teaching that the Bible was full of error would only destroy these people in the present and in the future.  After the Catholic Church changed in some respects, the Schaeffers joined with Catholics in their stand against abortion, or they sided with the Pope in his desire to exclude Marxist ideology from Christian teaching or Catholic social efforts.  But they also believed all people should stand together on the issues for the sake of the human race.

In 1953 the Schaeffers began their missionary furlough by returning to America.  They needed a vacation from missionary work, but all missionary furloughs become a different type of work.  On furloughs, missionaries travel to supporting churches to talk about their work and encourage support for it.  This would hardly be a vacation in any sense of the word, just a change of location.  Fran taught pastoral theology at Faith Theological Seminary for the year, and fulfilled a series of speaking engagements around the country to inform the churches about their work.  He also asked questions that the Holy Spirit prompted him to ask on the basis of his hayloft experience.

Before they left for America, they had no idea where they would live, so they prayed intensively.  In the middle of Fran's asking God to show them a place to live, as he was walking on their balcony in Switzerland, he heard a voice answer him.  The voice was so clear that it was as if another person walking with him had spoken three simple words, "Uncle Harrison's house."  He wrote to his uncle immediately and received an amazing affirmative answer.  His only other experience of hearing a voice during prayer was in response to a prayer asking God to forgive him.

Reflecting upon his time in the hayloft, Fran wrote a series of talks he gave many times during his furlough.  He called these simply: "Sanctification I, II, III, IV, V."  They stirred a controversy, as Fran pleaded for speaking the truth in love as we stand for the holiness of God.  Also, he emphasized the necessity for Christians to rely upon the power of God to minister through them, and not to rely only upon their own strength.  At various times in his meetings, Fran encountered misunderstandings of his ideas.  Rumblings began about whether or not he should be sent back to Switzerland.  After he gave the seminary graduation speech, a person approached Edith and sternly warned that the denomination was going to split!  Some of the denomination's leadership thought Fran was making a power play.  Edith explained the controversy this way:  Fran's message at graduation "had been so contrary to what was normally given of the centrality of pointing out the errors of others.  Objections came to such statements as:  'There is no source of power for God's people - for preaching or teaching or anything else - except Christ himself.  Apart from Christ, anything which seems to be spiritual power is actually the power of the flesh.'" 5.

Highland College awarded Fran the honorary Doctor of Divinity degree in May 1954.  By the time of the synod meeting in Greenville, North Carolina, disagreement with Dr. Schaeffer and his position became clear.  With the five talks he gave on sanctification (later expanded into the book True Spirituality) he insisted, in a way that many were not yet ready to hear, that the church and denomination needed both reformation and revival.  He said there must be a return to the sound teaching of the Bible (reformation) and a practice of that teaching under the power of the Holy Spirit (revival).  The Schaeffers didn't know whether they could return to the mission field or not.  Battle lines were drawn, but not just over the Schaeffers.  The denomination did split a year later (1955).  The year 1955 also marked the founding of Covenant College, Covenant Seminary, The Evangelical Presbyterian Church, and the Schaeffer' L'Abri Fellowship in Switzerland.

The conflict within the denomination became so heated that in the middle of their seventeen month furlough the Lord showed the Schaeffers that they would need to pray for the funds to return to Switzerland.  They decided not to write letters describing their plight and requesting money, but take their need to the Lord alone in prayer.  The girls made a thermometer, and colored it in as they received funds for their boat fare.  They needed their ticket money by July 29, 1954 to make reservations, but it came in so slowly they had to remind the girls that God might be showing them that His will was for them to remain in America rather than return to Switzerland, and all they wanted was God's will for their lives.  From unexpected sources, God met their needs right before the 29th, and the Schaeffers sent for their tickets home.

Through their prayers for boat passage, God reminded the Schaeffers that He would often providentially use money, its lack or provision, to show them His will.  By His Spirit and through circumstances, He gave them enough warning to begin praying soon enough for Him to work and give them the answer in a way that would do them the most good spiritually.  Rather than wait until the last minute, they began praying for money in the middle of their furlough.  God could have answered their last minute prayers and sometimes did; however, this time God inspired them to begin praying immediately and continue praying for almost eight months.  God often prefers to show us the need for persistent prayer to build up our relationship with Him and increase our faith when He gives the answer.  Through much prayer, God and His will often become more important than the answer we want, and God wants us to be in that state of heart.  After eight months of prayer and patient waiting, the money for their boat passage came the day it was needed.  What a wonderful way for God to inspire real rejoicing for His answers to prayer!  And what a tremendous preparation for the beginning of L'Abri!

The Schaeffers returned to their mission field in Switzerland, but without the express blessing of their mission board.  Some people were angry with them, because they thought Dr. Schaeffer was trying to take over the leadership of the denomination.  Rather than try to take over the leadership of a denomination or found a new church, however, Fran and Edith chose to bury themselves in a tiny village in Switzerland.  They continued to seek and to do the Lord's work prayerfully and in the Lord's way, to see what fruit He might bring forth from the tiny grains of wheat of this one family.  Toward the end of his life, Dr. Schaeffer marveled at how much God had accomplished that never could have been done if he had stayed to fight battles within the denomination.

The result of Fran's walk in the hayloft of Chalet Bijou really did mark the turning point in his ministry.  From the time of that walk in 1951, God began leading the Schaeffers in a new direction.  After the Schaeffers' returned to Switzerland, their mission board acted upon Fran's emphasis for "the need of cleansing on the part of Christians, and of being dependent upon the Lord's strength and in the power of the Holy Spirit, and of standing for truth with love." 6.  However, they acted the very opposite from what Fran advised.  The Schaeffers received a letter from the board, announcing that their salary would be cut by $100 per month.  Furthermore, letters began to be sent to their supporting churches, expressing opposition to Schaeffer's teaching and work.  Even Christian groups in other countries, with whom the Schaeffers had worked closely for several years, received letters warning them of the Schaeffers' influence.

How could they survive and what would they do in a foreign country far from home, with virtually no funds to stay and no funds to leave, with their material supply lines being severed in salary cuts, and with dire warnings about them being sent to those who knew and cared for them?

© Copyright L. G. Parkhurst, Jr. Revised Edition 2008
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